Friday, January 15, 2010

ISLAM: A CULTURE MEDIUM FOR PARANOIA, PROJECTION AND HATE

Recently an axe-wielding person of the peaceful Islamic faith was shot attempting to murder one of the Mohammed cartoonists. Kurt Westergaard, the object of the Somali jihadist's ire drew this depiction of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban which was deemed so offensive to Muslims that it warranted riots and death threats and, apparently, neverending violence against the hapless cartoonist:

The irony of engaging in exactly the kind of vilent and mindless behavior denoted by the cartoon is also, apparently, completely lost on those of the Muslim faith. Indeed, they are so lost to irony; or even the teensiest bit of self-reflection and insight that they can, without blinking an eye, come out with this sort of thing:

Hamas' terrorist TV channel -- which routinely indoctrinates kids by portraying Israelis as ghouls -- is launching a new cartoon series that depicts another enemy, the Palestinian Authority police.

A pilot episode shows a toadyish Palestinian officer watching as a Jewish character machine-guns a group of West Bank children to death and drinks their blood.

"You killed our children before my eyes," the officer says meekly. "I will respond with even more peace."

The grotesque six-minute pilot was a big hit when tested on Gaza Strip viewers this month by Hamas' video mouthpiece, Al Aqsa TV, and will be expanded next month, officials in Gaza City said.

....[T]he new Hamas series expands the hate-filled message by making monsters out of both the Israelis and the Palestinian security force, even though they have often clashed violently in the West Bank.

The pilot cartoon, called "A Special Mission," is built around Bahlul, a boot-licking police officer in the US-backed Palestinian Authority.

Hamas launched a civil war in 2007 against the authority's forces that ended with the terrorist group establishing iron control over Gaza and the authority retaining power in the West Bank.

Bahlul, whose name means "buffoon" in Arabic, obligingly kisses the feet and shines the shoes of an Israeli soldier, drawn with an enormous nose and pointed ears like a devil's.

He vows to "protect the [Jewish] settlements in the West Bank" and says he would shoot his brother, divorce his wife and arrest his relatives if the Israelis ordered him to do so.

In Gaza, this is ratings gold.

"We received hundreds of letters from inside and outside [Gaza] asking for the program to be shown again," a network official told Agence France-Presse.

It's perfectly ok to portray Jews as murderers who drink the blood of the children they massacre; but to even suggest as Westergaard's cartoon does that there is a violent streak in Islam deserves death by axing. Don't you think it's interesting that in the clip above, the child has been beheaded? What do you imagine that Westergaard's attacker intended to do with his axe? Hmmmm...which culture is it that glories in beheading their enemies...?

In psychiatry the psychological distortion that allows the mind to accept with alacrity these kind of blatantly contradictory and objectively false beliefs about both themselves and others, is known as projection. Psychological projection is attributing to others the impulses, emotions, and behaviors you won't accept in yourself.

Of course, there is also the elements of displacement and passive aggression (when they aren't being overtly aggressive, as well as a rather dysfunctional sense of humor. In fact, as I have noted before, what the Islamic culture in the Middle East lacks more than anything are any of the more mature psychological defense mechanisms--such as empathy (a more healthy and mature expression of projection) or humor:

...[O]ne of the major problems with Islamic culture--the inability to step outside itself and see itself as others see it. If an individual is able to do that, then that person is usually mature enough to appreciate the healthiest and most appropropriate kind of humor, which absolutely requires a detached and observing self.

Cultures which indoctrinate their members into a rigid, dogma or ideology are not capable of seeing themselves as others see them. Such cultures become petri dishes which nurture paranoia, delusion and hate.